Breaking the ice in a conversation: abstract words prompt dialogues more easily than concrete words

Abstract domains of knowledge may have social origins. However, whether abstract concepts (ACs) may also differentially affect communicative interaction and conversation has not been explored. Here, we studied ACs’ communicative functions by collecting in a sample of native Italian participants ratings for concrete and abstract concepts related to three main dimensions: communicative/pragmatic (i.e., Openness to Negotiation, Easiness to Start a Conversation), metacognitive (i.e., Social Metacognition -perceived need of others-, Word Confidence, Contextual Availability) and emotional-experiential (i.e., Pleasantness, Valence, Familiarity). Overall, participants judged it was easier to start a conversation, the more pleasant, familiar and positively valenced were rated the concepts. Crucially, at lower values of the emotional-experiential component (i.e., Familiarity in the Italian sample, also Pleasantness and Valence in the English sample), there was an advantage of ACs over CCs in the Easiness to Start a Conversation. Moreover, in the Italian sample, participants rated ACs higher on Social Metacognition, Openness to Negotiation, and lower on Word Confidence and Contextual Availability. Notably, in both the Italian and English sample, ACs with higher ratings on the Easiness to Start a Conversation dimension belonged to the self-sociality sub-cluster. The results offer new insights into the pragmatic aspects linked to abstract concepts’ use.